The statistics on how to win cat enforcement events

If the VO2 part of the equation has the right effect, it should take care of the fittest/least fit in the category.

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No, you’ll have to be a little smarter than that. I’m convinced you can. I understand it must be hard for you to even imagine a benevolent interpretation of my agenda. But if you try to overcome the apparent contradiction and instead fantasize creatively (or should I say wildly), then what could it possibly be, whether true or not, if it has to be a benevolent interpretation?

Same message as two years ago? Yes, very much so. Repetition of things that have already been said? Yes, mostly. Do we have results-based categorization yet? No. Do I think we’ll get there unless we frequently talk openly about it under the nose of Zwift? No. Do I think we’ll ever get there by asking nicely and timidly? No.

Fact: I never saw a single thread asking for results-based categorization before I began to start such threads myself quite some time ago. And that includes the FB Zwift Riders and, at the time, the FB Zwift Racers forums (I got banned from the latter for discussing forbidden topics).

I realize it doesn’t necessarily mean there were no such threads. Threads have a tendency to get deleted in here after a while. Spring cleaning, saving storage space, I suppose. But if any such threads existed, then they were extremely rare and didn’t cause much activity (well, there really wasn’t that much activity in here on the whole).

I also realize it doesn’t mean I was the first to think such thoughts. On the contrary, wouldn’t it be awfully depressing if no one else in here had had that thought before, when every other organized sport known to mankind has used results-based categorization one way or the other since… forever?

But I’m not a fan of this revisionism concerning this forum. It was was very different here back in 2020, and even more so in 2019. Comparatively very little went on in here at all. And the racing sub forum was mostly about a completely different type and level of issues.

Do I think I have had an impact over the last couple of years? Yes. Do I think I’m the only one? No, there’s been a few. Do I think the forum would be what it is today if it weren’t for those few (which, yes, includes me)? No. Am I fishing for recognition or cred? No lol. I just want zwifters to get fair racing and had to make a decision. Cred was never mentioned in the compensation package, if we put it that way.

There is another kind of revisionism that’s pretty interesting. There is a more scientific term for it in cognitive psychology, but we can call it auto-revisionism, speaking of. See, I could give several names of people who frequently post here who used to oppose a results-based system but who no longer do. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few of them don’t remember it like that at all. Is that a problem? No. What matters is where they stand today.

I don’t know how many times I have openly advocated power metrics for initial seeding. I started doing that when they tested AutoKitten. Who knows, maybe if you scroll up a bit you just might find such a statement from me in this very thread?

Exactly. So apparently we aren’t done yet.

Like I said above, I have. It’s getting better, although there is still work to do for the missionaries. There are still souls to save. Especially over in Long Beach, CA.

“Zwift are also looking at it”? Hahaha! I bet they have looked at a lot of things throughout the years. What else can they do if we post about it here? The only other option is to avert their eyes (they probably do that too sometimes). But can you quote a single source indicating “looking at” means “intend to implement”, ideally one that wasn’t contradicted shortly afterwards in other communications? Giving something the stink eye isn’t really looking at in my book. I’m picky like that.

No, I partly agree. It’s trickier now to intentionally cruise and for several reasons. One is the lack of transparency. For one, the old cats have been extremely transparent, which makes it easy to game them. The increased complexity to the model per se isn’t necessarily a problem, but another reason why we will see less cruising is that it has become less “democratic”. Before, anyone above cat D could cruise if they wanted to. With the new model only some will be able to. For them it won’t be hard, just for the others. But it really doesn’t matter. Power metrics will always be exploitable. It’s an unsound and counter-intuitive foundation to build categorizations on.

Or to put it plainly, it’s just wrong. You can try to “improve” it by applying more duct tape but it will still be broken and obsolete.

No, heaven forbid! But what other options have there been? (Depending on what you mean by approach - if you just meant that I refuse to become a single cat E defaitist, then sure, there is that option, in theory.)

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I recall on the Adventure Riding Forum in the off-topic free for all, a question was posted:

If someone showed up suddenly from the 50’s, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them.

I believe it was answer #43 that said Here in my pocket, I have a device with which I can access the entirety of human knowledge. I use it to look pictures of cats and argue with people I don’t know.

@Andreas_Traff that’s pretty much the long and the short of it. Zwift is a video game essentially operated by each person’s physical effort. It is always going to be flawed in some way due to the restrictions based on the game engine and ZHQ’s lack of interest in going further than we’ve seen thus far. Your continual efforts to educate us about how NONE of us know what we’re talking about have reached the point of Comic Opera. Let’s stop there before we end in Greek Tragic Opera.

No, I didn’t read that last post and I don’t intend to as it is truly TL;DR. Obviously you have lotsa time on your hands and/or you type very quickly and accurately. Personally, I’m about 30 wpm and then I’ve got to proof it. You must be in the 80’s or so.

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This is getting comedic. It’s a game. A very basic one, at best.

It seems simple.

1. Sandbagging - Mostly fixed with new system
2. Flexible cat boundaries, further helps with cruising - Next
3. Physics - Vital
4. Ranking - Last

People will argue that ranking should come before game physics. I totally disagree. Accurate physics would dramatically improve all racing. Ranking is just the icing.

Fix the cake.

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minor correction: The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42 :wink:

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Does that mean that we need babelfish to translate walls of text that are above?

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Of course. I stand corrected… :laughing:

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Ok, let’s see now, 1) You’re basically equating me with some Crazy Cat Lady, 2) there’s the “it’s just a game” argument (=there’s nothing to discuss), 3) I have to stop or we will somehow end in tragedy (what’s that, a threat?), 4) you don’t intend to read what I write and make a point of pointing it out.

Take a step back and think about it, the decision to not even try to refute any of my arguments, plus the level or flavor of your own argumentation style… Like I said above, welcome to the Call of Duty forums. Mark the teenage bully? Come on… that’s not you.

Besides, the standard low blow you’re resorting to too now, the various less curteous versions of “you seem to have too much time on your hands, you should perhaps spend it more wisely” that get tossed around in here, they are absolutely hilarious! Please, throw them at me again! Because without exception, they are always coming from people who seem to hang around in here all day long, especially weekdays. I can write something short (it happens) or something long but it doesn’t take many minutes to get a reply from the usual suspects. And they are littering the forum with one-liners all over the place. Your name implies you might be retired and it’s not for me to judge how you spend your days, but the others? Don’t they have work to do? So… right back at ya.

No way. To me personally that’s like saying until everyone in every outdoor road race in the world has access to the same expensive aero frames and special aero jersey fabrics, then it’s pointless to try run races with fair race rules. It seems completely backwards to me, if I got to prioritize.

HOWEVER, I don’t see any problem in working in parallel on race rules and game physics. I don’t see the conflict. Sure, resources matter in a company, but it’s likely not going to be the same persons within the company working on those two things anyway, provided they would at all. You don’t need to touch the game engine to address the issues I bring up. You don’t need C++ programmers to fix this, or even if you do then it’s still not going to be the same guys.

Also, I’m not jumping into your physics thread, you know the one, saying “Stop this farce! Results-based categorization must come before everything else!”. So why do you keep pointing out this imagined conflict? It’s almost as if you were using Eric Min language. You know, “I don’t want results-based categorization, over my dead body, but I’m not going to admit it, so I’ll say it’s low priority instead and point my finger at something else.” I don’t get it.

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You must be a riot at cocktail parties.

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Are you really expecting Zwift to improve rankings and physics concurrently?

We talking about the same company here?

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Has anyone ever seen this sketch before?

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Absolute nonsense of a thread.

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The Actor Kevin Eldon is a legend!

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You might very well think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.

“Don’t take yourself so seriously” is the message.

The only threat is that people will keep trolling you for a response, they know they’ll always get one.

You say the same thing over and over again in different words. Or in the words of Alan Partridge, “That was just a noise.”

Basically, many people who originally supported your cause and felt the same way, have now been put off and don’t really care, not because of Zwift’s previously perceived apathy to address issues surrounding categorisation, but because many people now don’t care because they’re bored of the subject.

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This is what RGT does and it feels much more realistic.

This is not true. I am now an A but for a long time was a B. I regularly raced in mixed category races and always tried to beat the As and will race as hard (but as smart) as possible. Most Zwift users do not draft effectively. I do. I won a mixed race where I did the lowest wkg of all the top ten As and top ten Bs (I did like 3.6, some As were north of 4.3). Nearly all of those riders were within a few kg of me as well. I never touch the front of the bunch and I work hard to maintain momentum coming into small rises and don’t race very hilly races and as a result I can stay with the front pack even if they push a lot more watts than I do. I just got bumped to the As recently (lost some weight, ftp is now 4.001) and I raced an A only crit. I finished with the front group as usual doing less than anyone else. There is good drafting if you know how to use it and it’s clear not everyone does. See attached image. 4th place doing the fewest raw watts and lowest wkg of the front 8. (Number 9 was dropped.)

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Whoa yeah, same reaction as above poster. The Zwift pack and draft is very much not like real world racing and I’m certain some trainers make it more difficult as well. I’ve been an A my entire time on Zwift and race road and track at cat 1/2 IRL. Getting Zwift drafting right is not easy. I still have real problems with it where I’m absolutely expending significantly more energy than if I could get the drafting right.

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This is why I stopped using my Tron bike.
My biggest problem is I feel guilty if I never take a pull.

Mhm… I’m that guy over in the corner debating the exact time table London-Leeds in 1968 over a club soda, together with you.

I must really get to you since it’s the first time anywhere on the forum I see you getting lost in the personal completely, losing track of the actual discussion, or maybe just blatantly ignoring it, but still insisting on making little contributions to the thread.

Umm… I get your point. I was discussing purely in theory. In theory it’s not a problem to have different departments or teams working on different projects in a company. Although mileage may vary. Regardless, like I said, you don’t see me shooting down the physics thread, from the inside. I think the physics is a highly valid and important discussion, although a completely different one. (One where there is no reason for me to participate at all since others are already doing a fine job at pointing out the issues to Zwift, loudly so, hence I stay clear of it.)

No, the message was the standard sudden turn-the-table argument “don’t take the game too seriously”. A debate trick as old as the Bible and kind of funny in the context since almost everyone in this thread seems to be deeply invested in Zwift. We all knew that already.

Although who the tragedy is can be debated. It will show in the long run. Let’s get back to this discussion much later on. I may decide to remind you after all, just for fun.

Maybe you shouldn’t underestimate my motives. Maybe I know exactly what I’m doing. Who could tell? Time will tell.

It’s working so far. Why would I stop? You guys are slow turners is all. Besides, you never supported my cause, Tim, you were always in opposition. And I’m NOT kicking in open doors in this thread. Still not. Obviously not. I wouldn’t be surprised if you deep down still believe you are at a disadvantage being heavy. Others go “yeah yeah BUT…” There is always that BUT, still. BUT we should stick to the new model for now. BUT it would be better to drop categories altogether or maybe even drop racing. BUT BUT BUT…

There is no BUT, says Yoda. There is only do. And the time for that is NOW, not later, someday.

A return to actual discussion (although off topic). Nice.

I argue it is true. It’s not very hard to figure out what you need to do to be more efficient. Zwift is a computer game with physical input, like most games, only it engages the large motor muscles in a way that is unique. But as a game it is pretty simple to figure out.

By contrast, stupid and contrived example coming up, as a… game enthusiast, many years ago I somehow ended up in a really nerdy niche community on the interwebz, a WWII combat flight sim. It was rather fun although I was quite out of my depths with over half the people I was “flying” with having real flight certs, two of them even former fighter pilots with participation in Desert Storm and whatnot. Flight physics, engine management, and the John Boyd doctrine, all at the same time. That game was hard for real. But it was still all about physical input (plus a bit of sensory and cognitive overload), although as opposed to Zwift it required no physical strength just as a professional violinist doesn’t really get winded from playing a concert even though it is #%&$ hard (I played for a bit in my youth - be grateful that I stopped).

As I see it there are only three things about drafting in Zwift that are a little tricky. No news below (I told you it was simple), but the first is the fact that you can ride straight through other riders, which causes these rather unnatural wave forms in a group. The ones who just ended up at the front don’t want to pull or are unable to up the Watts sufficiently to maintain current speed. All those behind thus have greater speed and will tend to overtake - straight through the front guys. Rinse repeat. And you don’t want to be in either category (front or overtakers), plus you want to keep your Watts as even as possible, which has become somewhat harder with the new pack model. Staying in draft while dodging the wave.

Second, we can’t control the shape of the group. Zwift does that for us. We all know that too. For example, you generally don’t want to be in those “waists” that tend to appear naturally in a, what is it, 10+ group, but you still can’t really do anything about the shape of it, and manipulating the logics of the pack dynamics to squeeze yourself into a better spot is not quite as easy as it would seem seeing as you can ride straight through others. If the good spots are currently occupied, you need to wait and steal them when someone screws up later. It’s like riding the spring classics while the roads deceptively look like the UAE Tour. Everyone nods. No news.

Third, what you see is not necessarily what you get. We all know the graphics engine was never designed for racing and doesn’t quite show what is really going on, it was never on the spec sheet, so today our on-screen cues are often off. A really old and silly example is when everyone hammers the turns (we do) because it looks like you’re falling behind. You don’t, but since everyone brings out the hammer, you do. I imagine this third point may not come naturally to someone who has no history with online computer games, but to those who have you come to realize quite quickly this is how things work (i.e. not very well by comparison). Zwift feels like playing online games over a dialup modem back in the late 90’s.

Other than that it’s mostly try to stay closely behind several others to maximize draft while not so many that you can’t respond well to movements closer to the front or that you end up behind one of those waists, one that snaps.

It isn’t rocket science. But it’s just such a cheap counter- or high horses argument when the new guy posts something about having a hard time getting good results in races. “Draft better, noob!” As if it was that simple.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree it can be hard to perfect drafting because the game engine really doesn’t help you much (as opposed to games like CS or similar where the screen cues work and your inputs result in predictable outputs). But it’s the same for all in that regard. Understanding drafting, what you need to do and what you want to happen on the screen, really isn’t very hard.

I don’t deny that superior drafting could explain success in a race. I do argue, however, that it is a relatively rare thing when drafting skills is the deciding factor at the front of a race, where a race is won. It does happen and is often apparent in the ZP results. But there are, after all, other factors influencing race results as well, as we all know.

Also, another point is that excellent (or lucky) drafting has diminishing returns the lower you go in categories. And now we actually touch on the original topic again, although vaguely:

Do you find that drafting skills among competitors increase the higher you move up in category? Don’t forget that there is more than one explanation to that.

A guy with a great aerobic capacity isn’t automatically a “gamer” who plays the mechanics of the game like a violin, far from (I watch races sometimes). And since it unfortunately still isn’t success in races that moves you from one category to the next, there is nothing funneling drafting skills upwards in the cat system, except maybe that cat A racers might race more often and/or take the races more seriously and thus pay more attention to detail.

No, there is another factor at play here too that we shouldn’t forget. You can be an ace drafter in cat C but the problem is that there is no end to various forms of competition down there, people who pose a threat through other competitive advantages than drafting.

Just as one example, in cat C you are quite likely to be matched against a heavier rider who isn’t drafting as well as you and who doesn’t have to. But that example doesn’t apply to cat A and that is not because of drafting but because of weight, which isn’t a relative advantage in cat A but is in cat C. Yeah, but what if you were in cat C and managed to draft well and were on the heavier side, wouldn’t that be an advantage? Sure, but then you’re adding the “and weight” to the equation. It’s the poopy performance ceilings messing things up AGAIN. They need to go. Or these presumed drafting skills will never quite shine.

repost, but the results are in… all 14 pen enforcement races i did as a B

zwift weight: 55.5kg actual weight: 54-55kg. avg top 100 B weight 70-90kg

my supercomputer is a direto x